


Necessary Things

by Merfilly



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Moral Ambiguity, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-12
Updated: 2006-12-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:35:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's her family, and she will use any resource she can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Twenty-four hours. It clicked off in her head, and she sighed softly. That was all the leeway she was willing to give her allies. With a careful hand, she disabled her comm. links, and then stood from beside her Boy-o's hospital bed. When she had volunteered to keep the vigil, everyone else had been relieved. She had truly hoped one of them would have found the child by now, her precious little Dart. But her heart had told her this was going to take more than they could manage quickly enough.

The number she needed was in her wallet, no name attached, and it felt almost like it was burning her fingers to even touch it. She still remembered finding it, the day after she had first let him …

She pushed those memories away, and walked out of the hospital room to a waiting area she could use her phone from. It rang three times, before a gravelly voice answered.

"Meet me," she said simply. "I have something I need to discuss with you. No tricks, I promise." She listened to his acknowledgement, and then gave him the location of a nearby building. The time he told her he could be there let her know he had not been far away at all.

`~`~`~`~`

"You once told me it was all about money," she said as he landed, twenty feet from her on the rough rooftop. "I have the money; do you want a job?"

His one good eye narrowed at her, took in the tightly coiled, aggressive body language.

"Talk to me, and I'll see. I'm a busy man after all." He saw her chin tilt, the words unspoken between them that he had come quickly for her.

"The bitch took my girl, put my Boy-o in the hospital. I want my Lian back," she growled. "Standard extraction fee, and whatever your expenses run."

"And the woman?" He was privately amazed she was willing to go this far.

She did not even flinch, wearing a look that reminded him so many females in nature were the deadlier half. "I don't want to know. And Lian should not know, either." His retort that he had never been that sloppy stopped just before spilling out in their old banter style. He weighed the words, and read in them her intent.

She wanted Cheshire dead, but could not ask.

He thought he might just do it, and count it under that expense column at a reduced rate.

After all, he had wanted her dead for years.

`~`~`~`~`

Roy's eyes blinked open slowly as Dinah pressed a cold hand into his. He processed that she was there, not out searching, and formed a weak protest.

"Shh, Boy-o. It's all going to be fine. I took care of it."

He wanted to ask at the level calmness of her voice, of that blazing certainty in her eyes, but he fell back under, certain only that he felt she had made some Faustian deal.

`~`~`~`~`

The next time his eyes flickered open, he saw a tall man bending his head over Dinah…who was holding a child…his child, his precious etai yazi. The door opened and the man started out, and Roy had just the briefest impression of white hair on the tall man in a turtleneck and casual pants. Dinah let the door close, coming back and carefully laying Lian on the bed by her father.

"Di?"

"Shh, Boy-o. We have her back. Nothing else matters."

`~`~`~`~`

News had flown out that Lian was safe, unharmed. The family had gathered…with Dick Grayson among them. Dinah only said a contact of hers had coughed up a location, and then she had managed to retrieve the girl. In all, she had been missing seventy-five hours. 

When they had been told not to overwhelm Roy, Dinah had pleaded fatigue. She left, heading for the small motel she had booked a room at when she had first come, before Roy had been able to have a visitor.

She really was not surprised to find him there, cartons of food waiting on her. As much as she knew this affair was one she never should have begun, she could not keep the relief out of her body language.

"Figured you'd be too tired to be there much longer," he said.

"How thoughtful of you to bring me food. Making a habit of this, Wilson."

"Well, sister, you're just a little bit of nothing as it is," he retorted with a slow smile. 

"Everything go through?" She sat, taking the open carton and chopsticks he had been eating with. He nodded as he watched her eat, knowing good and well she likely had not slept or eaten much since her boy wound up in the hospital. They shared a few points, and their loyalty to family was one.

"Not a hitch," he assured her. "We're done?" He raised an eyebrow at her, and she stopped eating.

She felt a warm pressure in her belly, touched by the fact he had followed up with her after dropping Lian at the hospital.

"No one's likely to come looking for me tonight." She let her voice turn upward, telling her conscience to go take a flying leap. She needed someone, and he was good at making her forget all the wrongs she did in the pursuit of right.

"Is that an invitation?" He let his own voice drop, watching the way she shivered at it.

"Dammit, Slade, don't make me say it out loud." She reached a hand over to him, and he took it, pulling her to his body, only stopping long enough to let her put the food down.

She was a strong willed woman, and would fight him at the drop of a hat, if she felt it necessary. One day, just like Dick Grayson, she would put aside what they shared privately, and do her damnedest to bring him in.

But not tonight.

`~`~`~`~`

She hated the phone sometimes. The pleasant weight of a man's arm across her was a minimal counterbalance to the annoyance of her phone ringing.

"Hello? Better be important; it's not even five."

"Dinah?" It was Dick, and that made her tense all over, fully waking her lover.

"What? Is Roy..."

"Fine, Dinah; they asked me to call you, let you know he's going home today." There was more in his voice, and she steeled herself. "Dinah, Roy told me...he saw someone."

Dinah swore softly; of course Roy had told Dick. "Doesn't matter, Dick. I did what needed to be done."

"Just so you know…I tried to get him too." Unsaid was the fact no one else would understand if it came out, that she had hired a known killer, and if Cheshire turned up dead, the woman's blood was now on Dinah's hands.

"Thanks, Dick." She hung up, and turned into the kisses pressing along her spine, letting the man in question distract her one more time from her moral fall.

`~`~`~`~`


	2. Repercussions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fall out

Three months, and no one had seen Cheshire. Three months of Bruce's hackles being raised, knowing it was not quite right, that Dinah had lied. Three months in which he found the surveillance of the hospital and proved that Slade Wilson had brought the child back to them.

More tape that showed the undeniable body postures between Dinah Lance and Slade Wilson as…intimate.

Three months was a long time for a Bat to stew over compromised morals.

It was made worse by her living in his city. Granted, Barbara kept her busy, away from town most nights.

Tonight, Dinah Lance was operating in his city. Tracking a man accused of killing his family.

Batman went to work.

`~`~`~`~`

"Were you hoping he would fall?"

The voice, the insinuation cause her already tense form to tighten more, reminding her that shoulders were not made to support two hundred pounds plus ones own weight at two hundred feet.

"Don't push me, Batman," Black Canary growled.

"Why? You're already over the line."

White out lenses met the glare of blue eyes, as they faced one another entirely too close. He wanted to pick her up by the shoulders, shake her free of whatever she was doing. She just wanted him to go away.

"I know just where I stand, Batman." She turned deliberately on her heel. "And I would walk to this point again, if I needed to." She ignored him completely after that, aching inside for the loss of a friend, but too proud to accept his censure.

`~`~`~`~`

* * *

It had been twelve years since her mother vanished, soon after abducting her. She had never said a word, never asked a question about that.

At five, she'd been too scared that she had almost lost her father.

At seventeen, she just wanted to know for certain. It had plagued them all that maybe, just maybe, Cheshire was alive and biding her time.

She knew better than to ask her father. Or even Dinah. She had overheard a conversation between papa Dick and Daddy when she was six that had stayed with her all her young life.

She knew Dinah had not rescued her, directly. She knew Dinah had paid a man to do it.

And right now, she was going to talk to that man.

`~`~`~`~`

He listened to her approach, not fully surprised. After all, this child was part Harper, raised by Grayson, and strongly influenced by his other bird.

She leaned against the rail, facing back, while he looked out over the harbor.

"Did you kill my mother?"

Blunt, to the point, and without a trace of emotion. Slade could easily say that the kid was a strong one just from that. But he never failed the letter of a contract.

"I'm not allowed to say one way or the other."

"She hired you, twelve years ago. Why you? Why not Shiva, or Shado? They owed her then. She could have called honor debt. She chose you." Lian wanted to understand; this man made her father hurt in ways that always came back to issues with Papa Dick.

"Those are questions for her."

"I shouldn't have to live not knowing if my mass murdering mother is going to pop back up, and hurt someone I love." Her gaze met his with deadly seriousness.

"Talk to her. She holds the contract." He walked away, with a new appreciation for Harper's girl.

She would bear watching, if he read her steel right.


	3. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lian asks Dinah for truth

He had called her, told her the girl was coming. Despite the estrangement in their lives, the lack of contact for some time, he gave her that much. 

He could not see the look in her eyes as she heard his voice, and she adeptly kept her emotions out of her words.

When Lian arrived, Dinah let her in, led her to the living room, and served her a glass of water, just as if this was a normal visit.

"Aunt Di," Lian finally said. "I want to know the truth."

"About what happened when you were kidnapped?" Dinah asked, acknowledging the purpose of her visit. Lian's eyes narrowed.

"He talked to you?"

"A courtesy call, so I would know that it was time." Dinah's eyes were shadowed. The woman had only come out of retirement a few years prior, when Sin had gone off to college. She served with the JSA as a trainer, rarely working an actual mission.

"Then you'll tell me?" Lian raised her chin, looking so much like her father in her almost too-sure attitude.

"Ask your questions, Li. I've never lied to you." Dinah felt as if she were under a microscope the way her goddaughter appraised her, and it was not a very comfortable feeling. Slade's call earlier had scraped wounds that had never fully healed.

"My mother?"

"Dead." Dinah indicated no regret for that. "I left the contract vague, but he knew my wishes…and made sure it would not immediately haunt me."

"Why?" Lian's tone was dead neutral, showing nothing as to what she felt.

"To protect you. I had reached the end of my ability to turn a blind eye to the havoc she laced through my Boy-o's life, the harm she brought to you. I wanted you back with all my heart…and I never wanted to face that again." Dinah barely flinched as she stated the emotions of that long gone night.

Lian grew silent, remembering every time Dinah had been right there for her. Whether it was helping her get used to being female, calling her dads off her latest boy-toy, or just plain being the woman in Lian's life. There was never a reason to doubt the woman's love. She weighed that against her dim memories of Dinah as Black Canary, a woman much respected by a lot of the heroes her family knew. She felt that what her godmother had done seemed…unbalanced by other things, but family was family, and always came first.

"Why Slade? I remember Shiva telling me once she could not kill me because she owed you her life already, and sparing mine cancelled that. Shado, when she taught me, gave me to understand she owed you face, because of Grampa Ollie." Lian needed to understand this. She knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, Slade was the worst person in her daddy's eyes, and would have been more so before Papa Dick had moved in.

"Because…he knew the weight of family in danger. I knew he would not let me down." Dinah met the girl's eyes, seeing the struggle to grasp the pieces not on the table yet.

"How?"

Now Dinah paused; she had confessed to wishing the girl's birth mother dead; could she also free her conscience over an affair ended some time before?

"He and I had an arrangement, then, one that assured me if I asked for something, commissioned a contract, that he would not refuse me." Dinah saw it in Lian's eyes as she heard the unsaid conditions of the arrangement, saw something else fall into place, something that made her wonder. 

"Aunt Dinah…did you love him? Is that why you never went back to Grampa Ollie?"

Dinah dropped her eyes. "Not then." There were no words to describe the complexity of how the relationship had evolved, driven at first from a mutual respect for one another, the ease with which they learned one another's likes and dislikes. "And when I saw that I had come to care…I left him."

Lian considered that, considered several things. She then stood up and started for the door, pausing when Dinah did not follow.

"You did right. Mother would just have kept trying until Daddy wound up dead or one of you had to kill her yourselves." Lian glanced back at the woman with one last question. "Did he make you happy?"

"Yes."

"That must have hurt." Lian then left, caught up in trying to understand why people like her Daddy and her Aunt Dinah had ever found love with the wrong people like that. It was a flaw she would have to try to avoid.


End file.
